In perhaps a first of its kind, this entrepreneurship internship class is a collaboration of entrepreneurship majors in the Fowler College of Business and the College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts. The goal is to replace a traditional onsite internship, which is restricted during COVID, with a combination of internship courses (Michael Sloan, MGT 401, Dr. Eric Starr, MUS 530), semester-based research and learning culminating in a music-oriented startup business plan competition.  

This experiential approach creates cross-disciplinary student teams from two colleges working on a potential music business startup. Specifically, entrepreneurship students from the music and business programs formed collaborative teams as an innovative approach to bring music, technology and business together to accelerate the development of industry-changing start-ups. The student teams will develop and pitch a business plan at the end of the semester for the development of either a new recording studio or the creation of live music events.

The Lavin Entrepreneurship Center is supporting the first ever Startup Music Competition. If these potential startups merit additional support, they will be encouraged to apply to the ZIP Launchpad Incubator at SDSU.